Images and Books of Law: A Plea for Visuals in Legal Education

Reluctance for Change

Books of law rarely offer space for visual supports. Even when Illuminated during the Middle ages, or when having elegant bindings in current times, books of law are reticent to use visuals as a pedagogical tool. Readers since the Middle ages can easily find exceptions in the arbor civilis, the genealogy tree to deal, amongst others, with inheritance, where authors devoted significant efforts to make visual who inherited who. In the early modern period, scholars of the Mos geometricus also offered an exception, including diagrams in their rationalistic work. The centuries that followed, reaching all the way until current times, also found in the realm of the law very few exceptions to the tradition of excluding visuals.

Advocates for Change

Scholars that delved into interdisciplinary approaches early in the twentieth century found in visuals an important conduit for legal education. John H. Wigmore–with A Panorama of the World’s Legal Systems–was a pioneer in the inclusion of visuals. He said, as early as 1928, that

if we are ever to interpret fully the cold written records of the world’s legal systems, other than our own of today, must we not first seek to restore, in the mind’s eye, the environment in which the several peoples lived and moved and had their being, and the setting of the distinctive events and traits in the history of their law? May we not, by pictures, give life and reality to the narrative? May we not take a temporary flight above the earth, look down upon the globe, and there watch the Panorama of the World’s Legal Systems unroll before us, from the earliest past down to the present day?

One year later, Wigmore was likewise a pioneer in mapping the legal systems of the world, preceding in seventy years the JuriGlobe Project with his cartography in A Map of the World’s Law, published in the pages of the journal of the American Geographical Society.

Need for Change

Visuals can be considered didactic tools and a way to increase comprehension and knowledge transfer. Tables and charts did find a place in legal literature, the use of diagrams is growing, and the presence of sketches and drawings has not gone unexplored in books of law. But what about the inclusion of maps, portraits, and images of objects in books of law? More visuals are needed. In books of international law, it is counterintuitive to neglect the use of maps when trying to depict a conflict between the borders of two jurisdictions or the location of resources. Neglecting the use could be considered a sabotage to the natural flow of ideas and knowledge. In books dealing with legal history, it would be only natural to offer representations of objects that are being explained. A visualization of a medieval gloss of the Institutes of Justinian is a recurring example, since interlineal and marginal glosses can be more easily shown than described. In contract law, a diagram or sketch can easily show the intricated relationships between multiple parties in complex contracts

Environment for Change

Members of society are more and more visually literate, and law students are no exception. Further, books of law are also transitioning to e-book format, where hyperlinks can take readers to image banks and to other repositories of visuals. There are fewer page limitations for publishers and use of colour images can no longer be considered a financial constraint in the digital environment. Visuals can also include footage, accompanied by sound, and there even more senses are activated, it should be noted. Visuals in law should percolate into the legislative domain. For example, already in 2003, Michael McAuley, in his Proposal for a Theory and a Method of Recodification, stated that the text of civil codes

where appropriate, should be accompanied by visual images, diagrams, graphs, and whatever best conveys the message. [...] The modern redactor will choose a medium that delivers the message clearly and without clutter. Perhaps in most cases a plain, literary expression will be more than sufficient. A code should be easy to consult and some thought must be given to its structure and method of consultation. Whether or not a civil code of the new model professes to be panoptic, it must certainly be synoptic by giving the citizen an overall view of the private legal order.

Academic curiosity and innovation are needed when dealing with legal education. Books of law can adapt to the stimuli that society experiences, including images, hance making use of new technologies. Boundaries and formats need to be challenged in that exploratory path. Participants in the education environment can only but benefit from the inclusion of visual support in books of law. After all, a picture is worth a thousand words!